The U. N. refugee agency has urged Japan to resettle more asylum seekers, its chief said on Monday, pressuring the country to help solve a global crisis after giving refugee status to just three people in the first half of the year. Japan is one of the developed world’s
The U. N. refugee agency has urged Japan to resettle more asylum seekers, its chief said on Monday, pressuring the country to help solve a global crisis after giving refugee status to just three people in the first half of the year.
Japan is one of the developed world’s least welcoming countries for asylum seekers. It accepted 28 in 2016, despite applications from a record 10,091 people.
It has since 2008 given home to limited numbers of refugees through a so-called third-country resettlement scheme, resettling a total of 152 people – mostly ethnic Karen people from Myanmar living in Thai and Malaysian camps.
“That programme is very small, about 20-30 refugees a year,” U. N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told a news conference in Tokyo. “I have asked the government to consider whether it could be expanded.”
Japan’s reluctance to accept refugees mirrors a wider caution towards immigration in a nation where many pride themselves on cultural and ethnic homogeneity.
